Months before the election, Donald Trump promised to shut down the Department of Education. Now that he has the trifecta – Republican control of the House, Senate and presidency – what are the odds that he’ll be able to close it down completely? After Republicans have screamed and cried about the Department of Education for decades, it looks like they don’t actually know what to do now that the dog caught the car. One thing’s for sure, they’re going to try to make public schools into white nationalist and Christofascist sanctuaries.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to remake education in the U.S., pledging to exert more control over funding and classroom lessons, to curb what he views as left-leaning tendencies at universities and even to dismantle the Department of Education. If his White House delivers on those promises, more families could get money to send kids to private school. Schools would face pressure to limit accommodations for transgender students and to end some initiatives aimed at addressing racial disparities. The goals are at once ambitious and controversial.
“There are a lot of very smart people who are very excited to get into positions where we can actually start making change happen,” said Tiffany Justice, a Trump ally and the co-founder of the conservative parents group Moms for Liberty.
Trump has promised to close the Education Department and has criticized U.S. school spending.
In his first term, he proposed merging the education and labor departments, but Congress didn’t proceed. It isn’t clear whether lawmakers would go for the idea in a second term, nor how the department’s functions—such as protecting students’ civil rights, providing funding for students with disabilities and distributing student loans—would be handled if it were closed.
Some Republicans have been reluctant to eliminate the department or cut federal funding that flows to schools in their constituencies. An Associated Press poll last year found that nearly two-thirds of Americans said the federal government spends too little on education.
Because states control so much of public education, the bulk of what the Dept. of Education does is oversee federal funding for programs like Pell Grants, special education and, you know, student loans. The thing is, business and industry don’t want further cuts in education – there have been many employers, especially in the southern states, who fight for public education because they want a future workforce to be able to read and do math. Not that any of this matters at this point (America is f–ked), but I do feel sorry for those special-ed teachers who are going to see their already meager budgets slashed.
Trump’s 10 point plan for education:
– eliminate the Dept. of Education
– cut federal funding
– promote Christian Nationalism
– attack teacher’s unions
– give public money to for-profit private schools
He warned us, and you voted for him anyway.pic.twitter.com/pMTU6rdMVj
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) November 10, 2024
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.